Fear Itself (24 page)

I crept over to our bedroom door and I felt for the latch. It was undone. Melanie had forgotten to secure the lock when she crawled into bed. I crept over to Melanie and I slowly lifted the quilt. Her face was pale and her breathing seemed shallow but to my great relief she was alive. I placed my head to her breastbone and I listened for a pulse. I felt the slightest rise and fall of her chest but I could not hear her heart beat. I lifted my head and I tried to gather my bearings. My eyes were still adjusting to the dark so when I looked at the nightstand and saw that her pill bottle was open I thought at first that I was seeing things. Melanie sealed her pill bottle religiously every night. I picked up the bottle and verified that the lid was missing and I tilted the bottle but it was empty. At first I supposed that she had left the lid open because it was empty, but then I noticed that there were six broken capsules on the nightstand. The glass next to the bed was empty. I picked it up and I walked over to the closet and I switched the closet light on. I swirled the backwashed contents of the glass and noticed a powdery residue mixed in with the remnants of her beverage. I turned my head toward Melanie as I realized what had taken place. Sarah had struck again. She had split Melanie’s sleeping pills open and emptied them into her glass after Melanie had fallen asleep. Melanie had drunk from the glass to quench her thirst in the middle of the night. Melanie had overdosed on sleeping pills.

I bolted to the bed and I sat Melanie up and I slapped her face, “Melanie…Melanie…can you hear me?”

Melanie just barely opened her eyes but then she closed them again and she fell back against my arm. Her face appeared bluish in the dim light of our bedroom. I pulled her back up.

“Melanie…Melanie…did you do this?” I thought perhaps, hopefully, that she had tried to end her own life…that Sarah had not plied her craft yet again. Not that that would have been good either, but not as horrifying as the alternative.

“Whaaaat?” Melanie eyes fluttered open but then floated back into the top of her head.

“Did you do this?” “Whaaaat?”

“Did you put sleeping pills in your drink?”

Melanie did not respond.

I panicked. I lifted Melanie from the bed and slung her bare-assed over my shoulder and flung open the door and started to carry her to the car. Then I thought better of that idea and I returned and laid her back onto the bed and I scrounged through her dresser drawers and found and slipped a sweatshirt over her head and pulled her arms through the sleeves and I grabbed a pair of sweat pants and pulled them over her legs and I lifted her, as though I were dressing a child, and I pulled the sweats up to her waist; then I hoisted her once again and I carried her through the house and down the steps and through the darkness and into the back seat of my car where I dumped her with less care than I aught.

Driving to the hospital I pegged the accelerator to the floor making a rushed pause at each stop sign until I reached the main road. I realized then that I didn’t know where the nearest hospital was located, or for that matter where any hospital was located, so I turned right onto the strip hoping to locate a hospital sign or to see someone who might be able to direct me. I cruised through red stop lights, slowing just enough to see that no car approached from the sides. I had gone several miles and I had not passed a single car or a living soul. I looked over my shoulder at Melanie. She didn’t look good. The knot in my stomach grew to the size of a bowling ball and felt just as heavy. Tears were streaming down my face. I couldn’t let her die. I couldn’t’ let it happen again. I punched the gas and I sped down the road no longer slowing at red lights. I was hoping to pass a cop; to have them spot me rather than I having to slow to look for them. I needed help if I was going to save Melanie. I could not bear to have her death on my conscience. I could not bear to lose her.

The speed limit was thirty-five. I was doing sixty-two. I passed through a business district: convenience stores and video stores and computer stores and carpet stores seemed to creep like turtles past my side windows leaving a wake of dust behind me. Then I heard the short blast of a siren and I saw flashing blue lights in my rear-view mirror. I rolled my driver-side window down as I slowed to the speed limit and I waved the police car forward. The cruiser pulled alongside me and lowered the passenger window. There sat a thin young policeman in a blue uniform with glasses too big for his long narrow face and a thin mustache that made him look more like a teenager than a man.

“Hospital!” I shouted as loud as I could, “Where is the hospital?” I pointed toward the back seat of my car to where Melanie lay.

“Follow me.” Was his muffled reply. The policeman turned his siren on and the repetitive blaring whine pierced the deadened silence of night and echoed off of the buildings like sonar to a submarine as we passed them and the sound of the siren faded into the emptiness of space as we flew through open building-less spaces.

Time seemed to slow and distort the world around me. Intersections and landmarks crept closer as minutes became hours. I thumped the steering wheel impatiently. We passed a blue and white “
H”
sign mounted to a light pole near the freeway entrance which indicated that a hospital lay ahead. And then the hospital came into view and slowly grew in size as we approached. We turned into the emergency entrance and through a traffic loop normally reserved for ambulances.

As I opened my car door the normal speed of the universe seemed to catch up to me and clock me from behind as my knees buckled and I crumpled to the ground. I gripped the car door and pulled myself up as two paramedics wheeling a gurney came racing alongside my passenger door. Before I could round the car on my wobbly legs they had Melanie on the gurney and were wheeling her toward the emergency entrance and through two large automatic sliding glass doors. As I weakly followed and entered the emergency room a doctor began working on Melanie applying pressured rhythmic pushes with his palms to her chest while a nurse forced oxygen into her lungs through a large plastic tube.

“What happened to her?” A doctor in a powder blue uniform grabbed my shoulder and spun me towards him.

“Overdose.” I said.

The policeman, who was standing just behind the doctor, looked over the doctor’s shoulder and up at me, “What kind of drugs were you doing?” he said accusingly.

“None.” I heard my voice break. “She took sleeping pills.”

“How many?” asked the doctor.

“Six…maybe seven.”

“Do you have the bottle?”

I fished inside my pocket and pulled the topless bottle out and handed it to the doctor.

“Did she try to kill her self?” said the cop who had moved to stand beside the doctor.

Up close I could see that he was much older than I had originally thought.

“I guess so…I don’t know.”

I turned my head and watched as they wheeled Melanie through a set of doors and disappeared down a corridor. I was in a state of shock.

“I’m going to need to ask you a few questions.” The cop said to me leading me by the arm to a waiting area of plastic lime green chairs shaped like quarter moons with stainless steel legs. A television set tuned to a news channel was mounted to the wall near the ceiling but the sound was turned down and letters appeared on the screen as the anchor’s lips moved. The cop and I sat across from each other.

“What is your name?”

I paused and thought about the question for a moment.

“Your name?” he said impatiently. “Mohamed.” I blurted. “Mohamed

Assad.” I reached for my wallet to show him the driver license of the store owner I had taken it from.

“You don’t look Muslim.”

“I’m not.” I forced a smile, “But my father was and it’s the name he gave me.”

The cop formed a puzzled look as he compared the driver license photo to my face and then he handed my wallet back to me. “What is the woman’s name?”

“Melanie Burke.”

“And what is your relationship to her?” “She’s my girlfriend.”

“Any idea why she would try to kill herself?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t spoken to each other for a week. We had an argument.

But I don’t see how that would make her want to kill herself.”

A paramedic in a white uniform poked his head into the waiting room, “You’re going to have to move your car sir…you too officer.”

I rose from my seat and I followed the policeman outside to the circle where an ambulance was waiting to unload its cargo. The policeman turned his head back towards me. “We’ll finish this afterwards.” He said; then he stepped into his cruiser and pulled out and disappeared into the mass of cars in the parking lot.

I was pretty scared at that point. I hadn’t had any positive experiences with the men in blue. I felt that I would soon be found out. If he had asked my date of birth or my height and weight my cover would have been blown. I had never thought to memorize Mohamed’s personal details. I climbed inside the Mustang and slowly pulled out and I turned to the opposite side of the parking lot as did the policeman and drove sluggishly down an aisle. When I came to a parking space nearest the exit I turned off my headlights and left the car running and got out and closed the door and started to walk back towards the hospital. I saw the cop observing me from the emergency entrance but once he saw me walking towards him he stepped inside the sliding doors and disappeared. I took that opportunity to rush back to my car and with the headlights off I pulled forward and onto the street and I drove down the main drag for a few miles and then turned down a side street and I took the side streets back to Melanie’s house. The car was registered now to Mohamed Assad and it was addressed to my old house so I didn’t have to worry about having the car traced to Melanie’s house.

16

Amazingly I had forgotten to be afraid of the dark until I reached the driveway. When I got out of the car I bolted toward the side door and up the steps until I reached my back door which was still standing open and I turned on the ceiling light and slammed the door behind me and fell back against the door and slid to the floor. I held out my hands and was astonished at my trembling fingers. I could have thoroughly shaken a martini but I could not have brought the glass to my lips to drink it.

I was in deep trouble and I knew it. So was Sarah. We were doomed. The police would not be far behind. Once Melanie was able to give them her home address they would be coming for me. My first instinct was to grab Sarah and put her in the car and drive away. But the police knew what my car looked like and they had my license plate number. I could have taken Melanie’s car but it would not have taken them long to figure out that her car was missing and we would have been caught. I had no money. Melanie had deposited all of my money into her account as I could not have my own account. We were cornered like rats.

And then there was Sarah. How long could I go on consciously allowing her to kill people? To stop her we would either have to live on a deserted island or I would have to turn her in to the authorities and she would grow up surrounded by doctors in a psychiatric ward. And if she was designated a sociopath she would be incurable. She would never be permitted to leave and both of our hearts would be eternally broken.

I pushed myself up from the floor and I walked into her room. I stood over her bed and looked down upon her warm innocent pink face; at her little mushroom nose and her round little cheeks and the maturing stretch of her face. She looked so harmless in her sleep. Tears streamed from my eyes as I came to realize what I ought to do. What I had to do.

I knelt down beside her on the bed and I rested my head on her little chest and I listened to her heart beat and I felt the warmth of her body. Hers was the only unconditional love I had ever known. She was the only person who I had ever trusted to be loyal to me and to love me as much as I had loved her. We had been inseparable since her birth. She had grown up lying on my chest or in the company of unfamiliar faces she had attached herself to my leg; and when we walked she held my finger or I carried her or pushed her in the stroller. Every happy moment of my life since her birth involved her. I squeezed her little body and then I stood and kissed her forehead before backing out of her room.

I went to the living room and I paced from there to the kitchen and back several times. Sarah was my life. The police would soon be coming. I could not let them take her.

I was always of the mindset that where there was a problem there was always a solution. There had to be some way out of the mess we were in. Someone we could turn to. Some way to live with Sarah without letting her hurt anyone.

I returned to Sarah’s room again and once again I studied her face; it was no longer round but rather longish; her brow, her lashes, the cut of her nose foretold of the blossoming of her forthcoming womanhood; of a not so distant day when she would be more independent; more capable. She was nine years old…almost ten. She was still so little. She was so loving to me. How could she be a monster when she was still my baby?

Fuck the world, I thought.

But then I thought about the life that she would lead; the murders she would commit. She
would
kill again. She would live a life on the run until she was caught and then she would be caged. She would be miserable. And what of the many victims she would leave behind. What of their families. What if she killed some little girl at her school who refused to share a toy or who was foolish enough to taunt her? What then?

I walked out of Sarah’s bedroom slowly with my head slumped down. I no longer felt the urge to release my anxiety by pacing the floor. I went into the living room and I slumped into the sofa and I stared out into space and wondered what I had done so wrong and tears began to pour like drizzle from my eyes.

I just sat there for a while trying to convince myself that I had other options. Finally I got up and I walked to the kitchen.

In the kitchen I found Melanie’s purse hanging from the back of a chair and I sifted through its compartments and found a full bottle of sleeping pills. I had seen the receipt on her dresser for the new bottle of pills and knew that she had refilled her prescription. I pressed down on the child-proof cap and I twisted the lid until it sprang open. I held out my palm and spilled six capsules from the bottle; but then I slipped them back into the container and resealed it. I restored the bottle to Melanie’s purse. I couldn’t do it. But then I pondered which was the lesser of the two evils: letting Sarah be caged or letting her fall asleep…forever. I pulled the bottle of pills from Melanie’s purse once again and I spilled six pills into my palm and then I resealed the lid and returned the bottle to Melanie’s purse.

The large clear glass pitcher in the refrigerator was filled with Sarah’s favorite drink: cherry Koolaide. Sweat formed on the glass as I removed the pitcher from the icebox and placed it on the table and then I plucked a small drinking glass from the cupboard and placed it on the table. I carefully cracked open the first capsule and poured the powder into the glass. One by one I severed the sleeping pills and poured their contents out until there was a miniature mound of white powder in the bottom center of the tumbler. The red dye in the Koolaide clouded up as I spilled it over the powder but the drug quickly dissolved and disappeared.

I slinked to the bathroom and I dropped the empty capsules into the toilet and I flushed. I put the Koolaide back inside the refrigerator and I carried the glass to the living room and placed it on a coaster next to the wooden rocking chair that sat near the fireplace. I rekindled the ashes from the previous fire and then placed a fresh log on the fire.

As I stood at Sarah’s bedroom threshold

I wondered how Abraham must have felt as he carried Isaac to the altar. I wondered how he could have brought himself to sacrifice his only child. He must have loved his god as I loved Sarah or he could not have done it. I knew that what I was doing was for Sarah’s benefit. I knew that if I failed her that she would be miserable for the rest of her days. I stepped into the bedroom and I carefully picked Sarah up from her bed, her blanket still wrapped around her body. I carried her into the living room and I sat down on the rocking chair placing her on my lap. Sarah stirred but she was still sound asleep. I kissed her on the forehead and her skin warmed my lips and tears began to stream again like a thick heavy summer rain down onto Sarah’s face. I prayed for God to come down from heaven and substitute my sacrifice with a lamb, but God was nowhere to be found. Sarah was a damaged human being. She would kill and kill and kill and there was nothing short of her demise that would protect the world from her or protect her from the world. It was my duty as a father to protect her from the wrath of the living and my obligation to the living to protect them from my Sarah.

I stroked Sarah’s face with my hand and I nuzzled her cheek to my whisker covered face and her eyes fluttered open.

“What are you doing daddy?” her voice was dry and scratchy.

“I just wanted to hold you honey.”

Sarah smiled up at me, but as tears once again filled my eyes and I felt my face collapse as I tried to hold back the flow that had welled- up inside of my head, she frowned.

“What’s the matter daddy?”

“Nothing sweetheart.” My voice broke and I turned my head away and sniffled and wiped my eyes on my sleeve, “I just wanted to hold you honey.”

“Where’s Melanie.” “She’s asleep.”

“She’ll probably stay asleep because of her pills, huh?”

I heard a pained yelp cry out from somewhere deep inside of me as Sarah’s words reinforced what I already knew. “Yes honey, she’ll probably stay asleep. It’ll be just you and me.”

“Okay
lover
.” She flared her eyebrows up at me seductively and I laughed and cried in the same breath.

“Okay lover.” I forced a smile.

“Can we go out for breakfast…just you and me…like on a date?”

“Anything you want honey.”

“And can we get married again?” her eyes grew wide, “In a real church like we did last time?”

“I would love to marry you again.”

“I love you daddy. You’re the best daddy in the world.” Her words were whittling away at my resolve. My heart felt as though it might burst through my chest.

“I love you too.”

I lifted the glass from the table, “Look what I brought for you. I knew you’d be thirsty.”

Sarah smiled and reached for the glass but as her hands tried to take it from me I found that I couldn’t let it go.”

“Quit teasing me daddy.” She scolded with a serious glower that looked no more threatening than her smile.

I let her take the glass and I watched as she greedily gulped down the cold red liquid holding the tumbler with both hands. I took the glass from her and I placed it on the table and then I buried my head into her chest and I sobbed out loud.

“Its okay daddy, I’ll hold you.” Sarah wrapped her arms around me and I held her so tight that I thought that I might be suffocating her and I let up.

I rocked her in silence until she fell back asleep. And then I rocked her until she turned blue. And I continued to rock her even then as the sun came up and filled the room with the cheerful lie of a bright dawning day; the light of hope; the promise of nothing. I rocked Sarah still as the room turned dark and the sky outside faded back into night.

* * *

When Melanie walked through the kitchen door I was still holding Sarah in the rocking chair. She walked toward me and sat down on the couch across from me. She drew a deep sigh. She did not know that Sarah was dead.

“How did you get home?” I asked.

“I took a cab.” “Are you okay?”

“A little tired, but yes.”

“I didn’t think that they would let you out so soon.”

“They didn’t. I hate hospitals. I snuck out.”

“I’m sorry for what happened.”

“I know you are…but I think it would be best,” she sniffled and wiped her eyes with a tissue, “if the two of you left.”

“I know. I’ll leave in the morning.”

“I’d rather you left now. I don’t think I’ll feel safe with the two of you in my house.” She looked down at me but then raised her head to keep her tears from spilling from her eyes. It was wonderful of her to feel so bad for doing what she had no choice but to do. I could tell that it hurt her to evict us. I could tell that she loved us still.

“Sarah won’t be a bother anymore. She’s sleeping. She won’t wake up.”

“I don’t think it was Sarah who poisoned me.”

“I would never hurt you.”

Melanie got up and bravely walked up to me and unfolded the blanket from Sarah’s face. Sarah’s eyes were closed and other than the blue hue above her cheeks she looked as though she were sleeping.

“Let me hold her, please.” Melanie was crying now as a stream of tears dripped from her eyelashes now that she could see that Sarah was dead.

“Things were so perfect there for a while. What happened?” I said.

“I don’t know.” She sobbed. “Can I hold her?” “No.” “Please.”

“Go to bed. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

Melanie turned and walked toward her bedroom.

“Will you see that she gets a proper burial?” I said.

“Yes.” She said without turning around and then she stepped into her room and I heard her latch the door.